The Executive Yuan passed the draft of the Patent Law in which the opposition system is abolished; legislators proposed to have the Law Governing Patent Attorneys and the Law Governing Trademark Attorneys combined into one

The meeting held by the Executive Yuan yesterday (15^th) passed the “Draft of the amendments to the Patent Law” and the “Draft of the Law Governing Patent Attorneys.” The greatest reform of the amendments to the Patent Law this time is to abolish the opposition system but maintain the invalidation system.  Currently, the applicant of a patent application will acquire a patent right only if there is no opposition action filed against his approved patent application within three months after the publication of the approved patent application, or there is a final decision determining that the opposition action against the approved patent application doesn’t establish. Under the circumstances, it is often that some enterprises in the same industry hinder others from acquiring patent certificates by filing opposition actions so that they can avoid paying royalties to others. Therefore, to protect the persons who are engaged in research and development, the time when a patent right is granted will be amended. Patent certificates will be issued first and the right to file an invalidation action will not be affected.  Moreover, the infringements of utility model patents and new design patents will be exculpated.

 

Regarding the draft of the “Law Governing Patent Attorneys,” patent attorneys must pass examinations to be accredited qualifications and they must have certificates for patent attorneys in accordance with the law. Patent attorneys should set up offices to do business, or two or more than two patent attorneys may organize a joint office to practice together. After the legislative procedure is completed, the current patent agents may continue to handle business for patent applications in addition to patent attorneys. That is, there will a double-track system where patent agents and patent attorneys will exist simultaneously.

 

However, some legislators of the opposition parties considered that it was likely to repeatedly waste administrative resources and legislative cost if different laws were regulated to governed patent attorneys and trademark attorneys respectively. Therefore, they asserted to combine two laws into one and proposed the “Draft of the Law Governing Patent Attorneys and Trademark Attorneys” to launch the system of “combining two kinds of attorneys into one” to upgrade the efficiency of examination procedures.

 

Source: Liberty Times 05/16/2002

    Translated by Joanne Lue